Paramount gifts put FCC merger reviews under ethics scrutiny

Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty accepted more than $12,000 in Kennedy Center Honors tickets from Paramount in December, five months after she voted to approve Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, according to ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who also backed that deal, attended the same gala in a private skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other company executives while Paramount was pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, a proposed $110 billion consolidation that still needs FCC approval.

The reporting puts a direct ethics question in front of one of the media industry’s largest pending transactions. Paramount Skydance’s planned combination with Warner Bros. would bring Paramount+, HBO Max, CBS, CNN and other broadcast, cable and digital assets under one corporate owner, making the FCC’s review a central regulatory gate.

ProPublica reported that Trusty’s tickets were disclosed in ethics records it obtained. Carr’s most recent financial disclosure has not been made public, so it is not clear whether Paramount paid for his skybox seats. Kennedy Center purchasing guidelines cited by ProPublica listed those seats at $125,000 per ticket.

The practice extends beyond the December event. ProPublica said seven FCC commissioners have accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from CBS or its parent company over the past decade. Carr’s prior disclosures show at least seven ticket gifts since he joined the commission in 2017, worth more than $63,000, according to the report. Across 10 years, commissioners accepted more than $260,000 in Kennedy Center tickets from CBS or Paramount, and more than $308,000 in combined gifts from media companies including CBS, NBCUniversal, ABC-Disney and Fox News, ProPublica found.

Federal ethics rules generally bar employees from taking gifts from entities regulated by their agency or seeking agency action. ProPublica cited four ethics experts who said Carr and Trusty should not participate in decisions on the Paramount-Warner Bros. matter. Walter Shaub, who led the Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017, told ProPublica that top regulators should not accept gifts from regulated companies whose interests they can affect.

The FCC defended the practice in a statement to ProPublica, saying agency ethics officials have cleared commissioner attendance for years and that officials attended the event across the Trump, Biden and Obama administrations. Paramount communications chief Melissa Zukerman told ProPublica that CBS has long invited officials from both parties to the Kennedy Center event. She did not address whether the gifts created a conflict, according to ProPublica.

Carr and Trusty did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez, who accepted Paramount tickets in prior years but did not attend the December 2025 event, said she followed agency advice for her 2023 and 2024 attendance. Gomez voted against the Paramount-Skydance deal, criticizing conditions tied to newsroom oversight and diversity programs.

The FCC currently has only three commissioners, although it usually has five. That makes any recusal operationally significant: a full commission vote requires a three-member quorum. Carr could also direct staff to act on the deal rather than bring it to commissioners, as he did in another media acquisition, but ethics experts told ProPublica that any path involving Carr could draw legal challenges.

The Warner Bros. transaction is already under pressure. California, New York and 10 other Democratic-led states sued to block it under antitrust laws, and more than 5,000 entertainment workers signed an open letter opposing the merger. Regulators in the U.S. and abroad are also examining competition, consumer and national security issues, including Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund backing for the deal.

For media companies, the issue is less the gala than the leverage around consolidation. A regulator’s acceptance of expensive access from a company with live business before the agency gives opponents a procedural target, even before the FCC reaches the substance of market power, licensing or foreign investment concerns.

This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.